Becoming Lady Darcy

by Sara Smallman

  The clippings and cuttings in the paper always referred to Millicent as ‘the mother of the Duke of Derbyshire’, rather than as a person in her own right. Despite Pemberley being preserved in English literature, the threat of abandonment and demolition in the post war years had always been a very real danger, and she knew that Millicent, with her clever mind, had been the reason for its survival. Funny, Lizzy thought, how the Darcy women were only ever mentioned in relation to the men that they married or gave birth to. Millicent had never married, always danced to her own tune and had probably been the happiest of the most recent of her line – running her home, raising her children and doing it all wearing a string of pearls and a full-face of make-up.

  Winston, injured and discharged, returned home in the summer of ’43, he had been serving in the RAF – flying out over Dusseldorf on a targeted raid one September evening, trying not to think of the hundreds of innocent civilians below who were unlikely to survive the night; later limping home on a tank leaking fuel into the sea, they had crashed into a field on the south coast. Winston had felt the intense pain as his lower leg shattered, he would walk with a limp for the rest of his life because of it, but as their squadron sat silent and still, battered and bleeding, they called out with laughter and relief grateful to be alive under the starry skies of England.

  Thomas Bingley, orphaned by the stray bomb that fell on the house in Fleetwood Road, never went back to Southend. Instead the Darcys took it upon themselves to pay for his education and he was admitted to Eton at the start of Michaelmas Half 1946. He eventually played cricket for Derbyshire and lived in a small house in Lambton with his wife, before teaching PE and Geography at a local grammar school. They had raised three daughters, one of whom they named Millie after her godmother, who had stood proudly at the font in a hat trimmed with feathers and a fox fur stole.

  The Jones’ girls never stopped talking or cleaning fires badly and, after working with the Land Girls for the latter half of the war and providing Pemberley with much needed supplies and amusement, they returned to the remains of their homes in the suburbs of Manchester. When Winston opened the house up to the public in the early seventies, Laura Jones paid the entrance fee and caught the shuttle bus up the drive towards the house that she had lived in for most of her childhood. She found herself overcome with happy memories as she sat in the servants’ hall with a cup of tea, remembering the moment that Lady Darcy had told her that she wasn’t being separated from her sister as she had feared, but that they would be living in this house from a storybook, the mornings when she cried for her mother and Mrs Reynolds would snuggle her close until the tears stopped, and the day they all found out, huddled around the wireless in the drawing room, that Hitler was dead and the War was over, all cheering with honest, thankful joy. Laura, now Mrs Palmer to the class of infants that she taught in Hyde, found herself quietly weeping as her husband averted his eyes and passed her a handkerchief.

  Jonathan Sykes never went back to Essex, instead he proclaimed loudly one autumn afternoon in 1944 that he had found his soulmate and companion of his life in the Lady of the House. They would live at Pemberley together for the next twenty-two years, where he would always make her morning cup of coffee himself and insisted on calling her ‘m’lady’ when she acted pompous in front of him, much to her great vexation. But he would hold her close at night when she screamed out in pain; the residual damage to her body from the treatment in prison catching up with her in small, agonizing ways; the nightmares that haunted her every so often, screaming out in terror as the sight of Emily being pounded to death by the King’s horse was pulled into her dreams as she watched on powerless.

  Sometimes the greatest love is found in the small, quiet moments of the night, the gentle cool hand on a burning fever.

  He died the night before the World Cup Final, peacefully and without drama in his own bed, which cast a rather sombre shadow on the celebrations of the following day. Kenneth Wolstenholme blared out from the small television set in the corner of the stag parlour as England made a play for the goal, “they think it’s all over!”

  “It is now,” said Millicent, jutting out her chin and refusing to cry, despite the sad looks and pitying glances from her friends and family. She sat silently writing at Fitzwilliam Darcy’s desk, making plans for the funeral - three loaves, two tins of ham and a Victoria sponge.

  Millicent didn’t stay sad, she was a Darcy and it simply wasn’t good form to grieve for too long. She had had three romantic loves in her life, and she was grateful for all of them, but the greatest love affair she had embarked upon was that with herself – she had lived so many lives, all of them remarkable in their own way, each one defining who she was at that moment in time. There was nothing to regret, nothing that she felt she had missed.

  As she climbed the stairs up to her small bedroom for what would be her final night on earth, she hoped that she would be remembered by those whose lives she had touched, even if it was in the most unremarkable of ways.

  Lady Millicent Augusta Darcy died in the early hours of what turned out to be the hottest day of the year. She was such a kindly mistress, Staughton had said to the coroner as they covered the body in a sheet and took her to the local chapel of rest; always down to earth, would do anything for anyone. It was a good old life, Mrs Reynolds nodded in agreement, as she packed a small bag for the funeral home with the clothes Lady Millicent had requested. Don’t forget the red lipstick, Kitty had reminded them, she will haunt us if we let her go without that.

  The room had become much busier now and John had signalled over from the other end that someone was looking for her. The elderly gentleman with the flash of white hair and the wide smile, he called her over and she embraced him warmly. He walked with a cane now but was still as firm and broad as he had been in his youth.

  “Hello, Lady Elizabeth. I must say, this is all very grand, isn’t it? Who’d have thought it of us, eh?”

  “What do you think of the exhibition, Mr Bingley?” She asked, as she caught his wistful look. “Do you think my great-grandmother would have approved?”

  “It’s very impressive,” he confirmed, before he admitted with a sheepish smile, “Lady Millicent would have thought it a big old fuss over nothing really.”

  As he looked around the long gallery, standing in almost the same place where his bed once stood, he felt a sudden rush of emotion for the long-lost days of his childhood. If he concentrated hard enough, he was certain that his old body could still smell Shalimar and cigarettes, could still hear Lady Darcy singing ‘Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues’ as the gramophone crackled.

  The Story of My Life

  Mabel Fitzwilliam-Darcy, the prematurely widowed Countess of Matlock, had five sons and no daughters which was, perhaps, the best outcome for a woman of her rank. The youngest was a boy called Albert, who was born six months after his father’s death. He was named after the venerable German prince who had married the British Queen and who would die on his namesake’s second birthday.

  Albert grew up healthy and strong, not tied down with the expectation attached to his older brothers. He went to Eton and Oxford, as was the family tradition, before marrying a lady called Maud Oxley, a buxom woman of middling appearance with a small dowry and a large chip on her shoulder. Taking charge of the family mills in Lancashire, Albert moved the family to a beautiful red brick building called ‘Hartfield’ on the outskirts of Manchester, where Maud blessed him with two children and the light side of her temper.

  Albert often wondered about his only son, Walter, a small disagreeable child who had nothing to recommend him. Despite being well-educated, the boy loitered about the house until a job was found for him in the Ancoats Mill. Walter Fitzwilliam felt that working was an unnecessary chore and he saw it as a mere diversion to the real business of entertaining and visiting his clubs in London.

  Albert collapsed one afternoon during a meeting regarding staff pay increases. It was preferable dying with his face down on the b
oardroom table than looking at the gnarly, red face of his wife, he thought as people realised what was happening too late. The world faded out of his vision, until all he heard was the distant, unsure voice of the young Doctor.

  ‘I don’t think he’s going to make it.’

  Walter took advantage of his newly inherited wealth and married with undue haste, much to the disdain and disapproval of his mother. The new Mrs Fitzwilliam, a nineteen-year-old actress called Audrey Duncan, was famous for her role as Miss Pretty, but Maud thought she had bad manners, a dubious reputation and was not good enough for her eldest boy, regardless of how young, pretty and flaxen haired she was. She gave birth to their first child soon after the marriage. Leonard was a bonny, bouncing boy with a placid temperament and a head full of ringlets.

  “You need to chop those off”, Maud said, “he looks like a girl”.

  “No, we need to dance, don’t we, Lenny!”

  Lighting a cigarette, she twirled around the living room as Leonard giggled with glee. Audrey hadn’t expected Walter to fritter away his inheritance; trying to maintain the lifestyle of his peers from school whilst not having the talent, business acumen or income to sustain it. Without the security of the job in the mill at Ancoats, Audrey and Walter ended up virtually destitute and living in Maud’s spare room. She raised Leonard quite singlehandedly, under the watchful eye of her mother-in-law, and earning a few quid here and there recording jingles for the radio, whilst her husband entertained himself with floozies down in London or tarts up in Manchester. Audrey didn’t mind as much as she thought she would. Amazing how one’s expectations lower once one is married, she thought, scrubbing her silk, monogrammed underwear in the kitchen sink with dish soap.

  Leonard worked hard at school and showed a natural flair for languages, teaching his mother swear words in Spanish and passing the eleven plus with flying colours. He earned a place at the local Grammar School and his grandmother celebrated by dropping down dead as she iced his cake, scattering a confetti of royal icing sugar and currants over the floor. Death was no excuse for extravagance, Iris thought, as she picked the dried fruit up off the dusty floor with sore, rough hands, placing it back into the jar for another day. The war might be over, but rationing was still in place.

  Walter passed away peacefully in a hospital bed one June afternoon in 1955. It was cancer, he said to a fellow patient as they smoked cigarettes stood outside in dressing gowns, the same one that had taken good King Bertie. He had nothing to leave Leonard, apart from an old pocket watch with a worn engraving on it that had belonged to one of his ancestors, he couldn’t remember which one. It was an heirloom, Walter had told him as he pressed it into his hands that summer evening. They both knew that he would never see autumn.

  Audrey lived a year longer before being hit by a trolley bus on her way to work. The contents of her bag spilled over the road and her pink felt hat, crumpled and creased, lay forlornly under the wheels.

  “Oh look”, said a passer-by, “it’s that actress who used to be Miss Pretty”.

  “Not so pretty now”, said another, as they watched the ambulance men lifting the bloodied remains of Audrey onto the stretcher and carrying her away.

  Leonard, now orphaned and alone, found refuge with a distant cousin of his father’s. She couldn’t offer him anything apart from a day’s pay for a day’s graft and lodgings in the stables, but he accepted gleefully, waving goodbye to Aunt Iris who was putting Hartfield up for sale and planning a move to Swindon.

  The house had been big and cold, but he had enjoyed the good meals and working on the land. Using the family names and utilising the Old Boys network, the cousin found him a job at the Home Office, and he progressed quickly, entering the British Foreign Service; he was based in Libya and then Bangladesh, before being transferred home for a regular desk job at an office in Manchester, where he could commute to his little semi-detached on the outskirts of Bury.

  Leonard married Margaret and they had one son, Derek, who was a commensurate disappointment; the path of his life decided when he failed the eleven plus and was shunted towards the local secondary modern, where he was barely adequate at anything. Still, the watch in his pocket kept ticking, and as time moved on, Derek met Lynn and they had two sons and a daughter. Leonard loved being a grandad and he recognised something of himself in the youngest boy and encouraged him with a particular favouritism.

  It seemed like only a few years had passed, but before he knew it the boy had graduated from Cambridge and everyone thought he was destined for great things. On graduation day, he pressed the small, smoothed pocket watch firmly into his palm, and his youngest grandson had held it in his hands, feeling the faint outline of the dedication that had once been engraved upon it: Unum factum ex multis. One made out of many.

  The older man didn’t care for the boys chosen career path, but he trusted that everything would be alright in the end and he offered his continued support: paying for the rent on the grotty bedsit in Mile End or taking them out for tea whenever he ventured to London. He paid for headshots and riding lessons, attended revues, festivals, and plays, he even suggested a new stage name. He needed something catchy, the agent had said, it was the nineties after all. Leonard pondered on it for a while as they drank milky coffee from chipped mugs.

  “What about Benn Williams? That has a nice ring to it!”

  “Yeah, I like that,” the boy agreed, as they sat in the rented room that smelled like Turkish meat and Dettol.

  A family tree has roots that run deep and strong, but the branches of it spread out far and wide, the leaves falling through time and reappearing in the most unlikely of places.

  Twenty-Nine

  Lizzy heard the clock in the long gallery chime its delicate melody, sounding out ten am. The house was due to open in half an hour and she was currently rummaging about in the small cupboard in what was once her old bedroom, trying to find a box of leaflets needed for her tour this afternoon. She loved the familiarity of being back in the Knights Bedroom and if she thought about it hard, she could still smell a hint of Impulse, stolen cigarettes out of the window, burning wood from when she singed the windowsill with her hair straighteners. The bed was still here, although it had undergone intensive restoration work, never to be slept in again; and the nail glue had finally been removed from the fireplace, although she had heard that it took nearly three weeks to gradually work it away.

  Pulling out the box of leaflets, she walked along the north corridor and down the staff stairs towards the stewards’ room where a small huddle of volunteers, gathered with brews and biscuits, waiting for the briefing from Hannah who would let them know what was happening for the day. Lizzy walked in late, halfway through the schedule, excusing herself and hovering round the door until the announcements were finished and the Thursday team went to their positions in various rooms around the house. Placing her box on the table she grabbed a biscuit and sat down, this room used to be the mahogany room, it still was depending on which plan of the house you checked or the age of the member of staff you spoke to. She opened the two-hundred-year-old sash window onto the view of the reflection lake, the peaceful morning breeze drifting in off the hills, carrying the scent of roses down from the garden near the Orangery.

  “Lizzy?”

  Hannah brushed back into the room, hurriedly making a cup of tea as she gathered clipboards and feedback forms under her arm, “they’re doing the filming in the library, so you will need to cut that from your first tour this afternoon, that okay?”

  She glanced back into the room distractedly, her eye taken by the small ducklings faltering about on the edge of the lake.

  “What filming is this?”

  Hannah, busily grabbing for a radio and checking the schedule for something more important shouted back as she left the room.

  “The Story of My Life.”

  Lizzy felt her heart immediately palpitate. The door clunked shut and then reopened as Hannah walked back into the room to slurp her tea.

>   “I am so dippy today! It’s the thought of Mr Darcy being about ten metres away from me all afternoon.”

  “He’s going to be here today?”

  “Yeah – did they ask you about it? We didn’t think you would be bothered,” she swigged the last mouthful, “he’s signing autographs and books in the Servants Hall for staff, I am so excited! He was FIT as Darcy… I mean, UFFF…You must have met him when they filmed here, right?”

  “Yeah,” she said hesitantly, her heartbeat in her fingers. “Yeah, I met him once or twice.”

  “So LUCKY!” Hannah whined, “trust me to start work here like three weeks after they finished filming… the most exciting celebrity I’ve met so far was Jemima Lancaster, and she was nice, but she wasn’t Benn frickin Williams!”

  She disappeared out of the room, leaving an empty cup and the radio on the table. Lizzy stood there; still, unable to move, her heart almost beating out of her chest. If she closed her eyes, she could still feel the touch of his hand on her skin, could smell the soapy warmth of the crook of his neck, could hear the low growl of his voice in her ear.